The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle is not a detailed year-by-year record of events with no political axe
to grind. It's a quasi-official history, splicing together information
from different regions of settlement centered around powerful kings and promotes an east-to-west
model for the settlement of England south of the Thames. Having dealt with
Kent, the entries turn to Sussex with
the arrival of Ælle in 477. Sussex is ignored after the arrival of Cerdic
and Cynric in 495. The Anglian people of the Midlands are completely
ignored with Anglo-Norman historians placing their arrival circa 525; and that
it's only with the entry on Ida in 547, taken from Bede, that we leave
the West Saxons again. A number of historians have suggested that the
eighth and ninth century compilers who first began to set down detailed
accounts of the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons were mistaking the origin
stories of the early kings for the arrival of the first settlers. Thus,
Ida was the first Anglian ruler to take total control of Bernicia,
although his ancestors may have been living there for a century or more.
The same goes for all the other origin stories with the exception of the
arrival of Hengist, whom most sources regard as the leader of the first
settlers.